Amidst all this jostling for enterprise room, there could also be a threat of displacement for existing ways and technologies when and if these new avatars make a safe landing. Wouldn’t Hololens elbow out video-conferencing in a big way some day? What would 3D printers mean for assembly-line platforms and sourcing/supply chain software’s of today? Does Google Glass toll a slow but sure death bell for smartphones? Does 3D printing growl at CAD, CAM already?

Ask Satish RM, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, and he does not discount such possibilities, specially if we are thinking of how new technologies intersect with existing ecosystems. Who thought Tesla and Google will enter and stir up the car market they are doing now? After all, we had only thought that Google is just a technology company and never looked at them as an automotive company.”

But there is good spill-over to that too, he enlightens. Examples like Tesla’s association with a semiconductor firm for better batteries or Delphi’s working closely with an algorithm-maker, show that intersections can be anywhere and turn out good for overall industry in never-thought of ways.

But to cut it short, things are changing fast and way fast, he sums up.

The Flip Side of a Sunny Omelette

No doubt, these technologies will bring transformation and they will have more impact in enterprise market, but the question is ‘how’.” Part of the ‘how’ also entails questions that go beyond tech and business radius. That’s where safety and privacy issues hog the spotlight that the idea would have otherwise basked in.
Add to this soup concerns like BYOD, regulatory alignment, standards and execution finesse, and we have a mousetrap ready for the reckless kind.

Satish seconds to all the social issues that a great product like Google Glass has already attracted as a consumer product. That also tells why Amazon is ready for using Drones in logistics but regulatory nods play a big step on the way. Such things take time and possibly by next year these concerns would have been creased well and we might see some pilots.

“I&O leaders should understand that taking a holistic view of the wearables market is key to being a meaningful participant in the customer-centered innovation initiatives of your company” J. P Gownder, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research cautions too. “They’ll serve customers more efficiently and effectively with wearables. In the age of the customer, this can mean reengineering customer service interactions, as Virgin Atlantic has done. As more people buy wearables, they’ll become BYO devices that I&O must accommodate.”

Now add the factor of adequate skills in the market to the stew, and we have one more ingredient to confront with. From Mainframes to intelligent refrigerators, there is always that question of ‘who will service’ or ‘who will manage the backstage’ that hovers above and around new inventions.

From the perspective of Rishi Das, founder, HirePro, new trends like these impact niche areas for skills. “UI, UX for instance is currently a big niche area gaining steam where demand-supply imbalance is creating more appetite for skills. UI, UX guys are being paid more and are in massive short supply in India. So when it comes to innovations like 3D printing most companies are still working at parts and pieces of the whole problem. There is not much supply of skills or even awareness in India yet but yes in next few years these trends will gain lot of weight. But yes, skills will remain a crucial factor for enterprise adoption even though it will take a few years for that to happen.”

Enterprises and more importantly vendors, need to fix all the these missing pieces before they can dream of a world where people walk around with preternatural glasses and backslap a drone colleague.